Anyone have one of those Pebble watches?

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mcmanigle

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John McManigle
After seeing a few different weather watchface implementations, I decided to try to get a METAR on my wrist. This is the result so far.

If you have a Pebble and are familiar with development, let me know and I'll send it on to you etc. We have a couple of iOS weather app developers on PoA, right? If you want Pebble functionality, we can probably work something out.

I'm afraid things are a bit on the rough-and-dirty side at the moment, so if you just got a Pebble for Christmas but don't have it talking to your computer, I don't have an easy way to get this to you just yet, but if/when I do, I'll update. It's mostly a fun project that's taken way too much of my time.
 

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That looks pretty cool. If they make that watch solar powered, that could be (with some minor personalization) the ultimate aviation watch I have been looking for.
 
PPC1052 said:
That looks pretty cool. If they make that watch solar powered, that could be (with some minor personalization) the ultimate aviation watch I have been looking for.
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Yeah; the trick to most of these things seems to be making it a plausible use case. Nobody is going to be browsing airports / weather and doing flight planning on their watch, but a quick glance at the closest METAR could be enough to decide whether you should try to sneak out of work for an afternoon flight.

Similarly, I don't know how useful it would be in-flight for interactive tasks, but it does vibrate so could have some use as a fuel tank reminder or takeoff/landing time logger or a display that continuously lists the frequencies for the closest three airports.
 
mcmanigle said:
Yeah; the trick to most of these things seems to be making it a plausible use case. Nobody is going to be browsing airports / weather and doing flight planning on their watch, but a quick glance at the closest METAR could be enough to decide whether you should try to sneak out of work for an afternoon flight.

Similarly, I don't know how useful it would be in-flight for interactive tasks, but it does vibrate so could have some use as a fuel tank reminder or takeoff/landing time logger or a display that continuously lists the frequencies for the closest three airports.
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My dream set up would be a primary screen with easy to read time, seconds, date and zulu time, with one push button to toggle up an easy to read stop watch, and another button to toggle to an easy to read TAF/METAR for the closest airport. Make it solar powered so I never have to take it off to charge it or change a battery. Vibrating timer is nice, as you say, for a tank switching reminder.

If you could toggle to a page that shows frequencies and headings to the nearest airports, that would be cool, too.
 
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Nope, I was looking at that, but my number came up for a google glass so I've been playing with that now.
 
flyingron said:
Nope, I was looking at that, but my number came up for a google glass so I've been playing with that now.
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Count me amongst the group who is curious as to how Glass will wind its way into aviation like the iPads did.

But I think Macmanigle's Pebble Watch project is an interesting one.
 
Pebbles watch?? :dunno:

url
 
I have the Sony Smartwatch 2, and a Recon Jet on-order. I was hoping to make them play nice with Avare or wriite my own code so I can have things like frequencies, eta and maybe a D-Bar on my wrist or just below my vision. But not much spare time for things like that lately.
 
I'm the developer of Takeoff Aviation Weather for iOS and Android, and I'd love to talk about Pebble integration!
 
I've had a Pebble since shortly after their launch on Kickstarter. I love it. Functionality is good, battery life is great (4-5 days on average), and it's proven to be pretty rugged.

I'd love to try out your METAR watch face. I'm a Pebble developer so I 'know what to do.'

Mike
 
I've posted the watchface here. It requires version 2 of the Pebble firmware. It's relatively untested, and the biggest issues are:
1. It updates only every 15 minutes
2. It relies on the Pebble app running on your phone for updates, so if you start seeing that the METAR is 90 minutes old, open the app and either restart the watchface (by swapping it out and back in) or wait for the next 15 minutely update. iOS has a habit of closing the app in the background when it thinks memory is low.
3. It relies currently on my personal server for METAR updates. Sometimes I tell my server to report a certain METAR specifically, regardless of your lat/lon coordinates, if I want to see how a particularly interesting weather feature displays.
4. I'm not sure what it will do if a station is reporting 4 different cloud layers. Probably not display a cloud line at all.

Derek, that would be great. Send me a PM with your e-mail address and we can figure out how it might work.
 
The thread made me curious about the Pebble watch, so I went to Best Buy to check it out. Did not have one on display so didn't buy one. I kinda like to check things out before I plop down $150

Oh well, it sounds cool anyway
 
Well, I didn't have a Pebble a few days ago when I initially read this thread.

But I do now, it's awesome
 
I am holding out for the Pebble Steel. Sorry you bought technology that is about to become obsolete. [/:sadfrownyface]
 
PPC1052 said:
I am holding out for the Pebble Steel. Sorry you bought technology that is about to become obsolete. [/:sadfrownyface]
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As I understand it, at least for this iteration, the Pebble Steel is just a cosmetic improvement over the original Pebble. The innards are the same, with the exception of a new RGB LED on the Pebble Steel for visible notifications. No difference in battery life, memory, processor, connectivity, etc. that they're prominently advertising anyway.
 
mcmanigle said:
As I understand it, at least for this iteration, the Pebble Steel is just a cosmetic improvement over the original Pebble. The innards are the same, with the exception of a new RGB LED on the Pebble Steel for visible notifications. No difference in battery life, memory, processor, connectivity, etc. that they're prominently advertising anyway.
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It does have more memory. There may be minimal differences in the battery life. But other than that, that's true.

I was really just poking fun at those that think that technology is "obsolete" just because a more recent version comes along.
 
In case anybody is still interested, there's a new version (minor cosmetic changes) here and a little write-up of a bit of the programming involved here.
 
The tech shows have been predicting something from Apple in this arena for some time.

I know not everyone here loves everything Apple, but they do have a history of taking an existing niche (mp3 players or tablets, let's say) and coming out with a compelling product that markedly improves, or at least popularizes, that niche.

Anyway, both Google Glass and the Pebble fall under the category "wearable computing", and once the tech catches up with the promise, that should be an exploding category - or at least that's my guess.
 
FastEddieB said:
I know not everyone here loves everything Apple, but they do have a history of taking an existing niche (mp3 players or tablets, let's say) and coming out with a compelling product that markedly improves, or at least popularizes, that niche.
Click to expand...

I think that's very likely.
 
mcmanigle said:
In case anybody is still interested, there's a new version (minor cosmetic changes) here and a little write-up of a bit of the programming involved here.
Click to expand...

I might buy a Pebble just for this app. That's really cool.
 
In case anybody is still following this, given the iOS 8 update, the Pebble firmware 2.5 update, and a few minor changes I made, it's much more reliable. (Before, the background app would tend to quit on iOS and stop getting updates. The folks at Apple and Pebble fixed that somewhat.)

If you're interested, the updated version is here; you can install it by going to that link on whatever phone is paired to your Pebble.


I'm also thinking about a minimum-interaction, en-route frequency reference / nrst helper / timer with these features:
1. Prior to departure, indicate your destination airport and whether you want fuel timers and/or FAF timers.
2. In general, display the name, distance, direction, and frequencies (ground, CTAF/tower, approach, center) for the nearest airport, except:
3. Within 25 nm (?) of the destination airport, display its distance, direction, and frequencies.
4. When crossing any FAF inbound associated with destination airport, begin a timer based on ground speed, if selected. Vibrate on expiration.
5. Vibrate every x minutes for fuel timer, if selected.

I won't have time to do this for another month or two, but looking into it, I can't find IAP information (FAF coordinates and distances) in a database format anywhere. Is that information out there?
 
Didn't Apple come out with something like this?...I kid...I kid...:D
 
chartbundle said:
The official data is here(but not cheap):
http://faacharts.faa.gov/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=CIFP

It appears that there are fixes in the FADDS database marked as FAF, but not all of them.
https://nfdc.faa.gov/xwiki/bin/view/NFDC/FADDS
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Yeah; I had found the FADDS database. Well, when I get around to this I'll probably go ahead and buy the CFIP database for one round, and then see if anybody is using/liking it enough to pitch in to keep a subscription going after a year.

Gucci Pilot said:
Didn't Apple come out with something like this?...I kid...I kid...:D
Click to expand...

Yeah, to be honest I'll probably wind up with one of those and program it for similar things. I suspect the GPS API will be easier to deal with and fewer memory constraints and connection issues with the Apple watch compared to Pebble. But I do love the battery life and simplicity of the Pebble, and I suspect it will be another year at least before I go the iWatch direction.


And I do think people generally try to do too much with a watch. People have enough crap to fiddle with in the cockpit already. What I like about my proposed mechanism is that the pilot just puts in a destination, and the watch stays out of the way. If you need a NRST or current frequency, you can just glance down at it, but it's not interrupting your workflow. If you cross a FAF, it will time for you and vibrate when you expire (without you needing to work out ground speed etc), but it's not in your way.

One problem with this is that my initial thought was that on crossing any FAF, the timer would start, and it would just figure out which approach you were doing based on which FAF you're crossing. But if the same runway has (for example) a VOR approach and an ILS, there's precious little way to figure out which one you're doing by GPS track alone...

Maybe a message when crossing inbound that asks "Crossing VOR-24 FAF Inbound. Timer? Y/N" Or maybe just an "APPR" button you can press any time you're within (?) 25nm of the destination airport to load an approach. We'll see. As with so many of these things, I don't think I'll know for sure until I try it and get annoyed by it.
 
If the FAF is for both a LOC and an ILS, just automatically run the timer. There is no harm in having the redundancy of knowing when you have to go missed for the LOC, particularly in the rare situation in which you lose the glideslope, but still have the localizer. I think your proposed additions are outstanding.
 
PPC1052 said:
If the FAF is for both a LOC and an ILS, just automatically run the timer. There is no harm in having the redundancy of knowing when you have to go missed for the LOC, particularly in the rare situation in which you lose the glideslope, but still have the localizer.
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Agreed for LOC/ILS. The main problem I'm (mentally) having is what to do for situations like a VOR approach and an LOC approach existing for the same runway. Without interrogating the user somehow, you wouldn't be able to tell whether they got vectors to final for one vs the other...

Also vaguely considering a "missed" button with quick display of the pictorial missed approach instructions (assuming those are in the database) so even when a FAF timer isn't appropriate (eg RNAV approach) it would be helpful to know the pilot is shooting it.
 
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